Cumulative Impact

Working as a social worker with children and families is rarely, if ever, straight forward and simple. There are nearly always a number of factors to consider or take into account, when deciding on any action to take.

There are questions that you need to ask yourself, or gain answers to, such as some of the following:

What progress has been made since working with the family?

How well has the parent engaged with the work?

What is their attitude to the concerns of professionals?

What services and support have been made available to the family and are they appropriate?

What harm, if any, has the child suffered, and is that harm attributable to the care they received from the parent/s?

Are there mitigating factors to be taken into account?

Is the threshold criteria met?

These questions demand serious thought and deliberation from you, particularly the question about harm and whether the threshold criteria has been met.

Making a decision about whether the child is suffering significant harm, or is likely to suffer significant harm, and that harm is attributable to the care likely given to the child, if the order were not made; being not what it would be reasonable for a parent to give to the child, can be a very complex decision.

In many cases due to the length of time working with the family and collating evidence, it is pretty clear whether the threshold criteria is met.

But in some cases, it is not.

This is often because although there may be a level of concern about the care given to the child, it is unclear that he or she is suffering significant harm, or there is disagreement amongst professionals and/or uncertainty concerning whether the care offered by the parent is unreasonable, or not good enough.

You will probably have come across children who present as a little grubby, whose home environment is somewhat unhygienic, and they are a little behind their peers developmentally or academically.

For some professionals there is a concern about neglect, whereas for others the care given is not thought to be an issue that evokes disquiet.

Under such circumstances the question I have found to be helpful is to focus your attention on, what will be the likely impact in the future of the care the child is receiving?

This question demands that you consider the incremental, or drip by drip impact, of the parenting the child receives, over a lengthy period of time.

The point is that although he or she may be a little bit behind currently, to do the child justice you are going to have to look at the evidence and see if you can see a pattern of care that has emerged or is emerging.

If the impact of that pattern of care, in your view, is likely to result in the child being harmed bit by bit more each day, then you may conclude that the child is suffering, or is likely to suffer significant harm.

In other words, the cumulative impact of the parenting provided to the child is such that over a period of time, the harm that may be barely visible now, will be much more visible in the e years to come.